I. Background Information/ Additional Perspectives

A. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill March 24, 1989 marked the date of the largest oil tanker spill in the history of United States as the tanker Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. This incident put Exxon into a crisis as it made the Alaskan region into a worldwide symbol of environmental chaos. The enormity of the ecological ruin and the phenomenal task of cleanup caught the attention of the many nations. Many workers and volunteers flooded the area for its restoration which required extensive labor and $2.1 billion of Exxon funding. The crisis is blamed to the following reasons: the faults were Exxon’s inadequate equipments on the ship and the insufficient number of trained members. Another thing is that a crew was unable to maneuver the ship properly due to exhaustion with work aboard. It was also traced that Captain Joseph Hazelwood was under the influence of alcohol which was the reason why he cannot give proper instructions to the staff. Hazelwood's activities in town and on the ship are the main focuses of the investigation. This also became the basis of widespread media sensation. Indeed, Exxon’s reputation suffered severely. Some Public Relation Practitioners said that Exxon seriously worsened the damage to the public due to its slow and insufficient responses. Exxon also failed to establish itself as a company concerned about the problems it had caused. As a matter of fact Lawrence Rawl, Exxon’s chairman waited about a week before commenting on the crisis and almost three weeks before visiting the location of the spill. B. Johnson and Johnson: Tylenol

In 1982, Tylenol, the top selling pain-killer medicine in the United States and Johnson and Johnson’s bestselling product faced a big dilemma when seven people in Chicago were